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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Young People and 
World Evangelization 



Young People and 
World Evangelization 



By 
JOHN FRANKLIN GOUCHER 

PRESIDENT OF THE WOMAN'S 
COLLEGE OF BALTIMORE 




CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEW YORK: EATON AND MAINS 












COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY 
JENNINGS & GRAHAM. 



God's "eternal purpose, which he pur- 
posed in Christ Jesus our Lord/' is to es- 
tablish His kingdom over willing hearts 
throughout the entire world. He uses para- 
ble, prophecy, and prayer, as well as direct 
statement to emphasize the certainty that 
His kingdom will be established and to give 
instruction concerning its character and 
man's relation to its coming. His king- 
dom is likened to a "stone cut out of the 
mountain without hands," which "became 
a great mountain, and filled the whole 
earth." It "is like unto leaven, which a 
woman took and hid in three measures of 
meal, till the whole was leavened." "Then 
cometh the end, when Christ shall have de- 
livered up the kingdom to God, even the 
Father; when He shall have put down all 
5 



6 Young People and 

rule and all authority and power. For He 
must reign, till He hath put all enemies 
under His feet." In the prayer which our 
Lord gave the Church to be her model and 
a part of her daily ritual, He commanded, 
"After this manner therefore pray ye : Our 
Father which art in heaven, hallowed be 
Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will 
be done in earth, as it is in heaven." The 
compass and content of this prayer express 
with solemn significance the purpose of 
God and confront the Church and His every 
follower with grave responsibilities. 

Prayer is the offering up of our sin- 
cere desires to Almighty God with con- 
fession, supplication, and thanksgiving. It 
is not prayer unless it is born of a con- 
trolling desire, accompanied with faith in 
God, and "faith without works is dead." 
To pray, "Thy kingdom come," is to pray 
for everything preparatory and essential to 



World Evangelization 7 

its coming, both in one's own life and in 
the world at large. The use of this petition 
always implies the attitude of soul which 
finds expression in, "What wilt Thou have 
me to do?" It pledges us to the warfare 
against evil, places us in the army of God, 
and makes withholding or indifference 
treachery and desertion. 

The organization and training of the 
Church are for the development and ex- 
pansion of the kingdom. Its commission 
is "to all nations," "to all the earth," "to 
all the world," "to all flesh," "to all that 
are afar off," "to every creature," "to the 
ends of the earth," "unto the uttermost parts 
of the earth." Not to the world or com- 
munities in mass, but "to every creature," 
individualized. The Church through her 
members is required "to preach/' "to warn," 
"to declare," "to teach," "to show," "to evi- 
dently set forth," "to witness," "to baptize ;" 



8 Young People and 

to proclaim by living voice and printed 
page, to witness by personal living and by 
organized ministries and ordinances, "both 
in Jerusalem" — through city evangeliza- 
tion, "and in all Judea" — through home mis- 
sions — "and in Samaria, and unto the utter- 
most parts of the earth" — to perverts and 
the indifferent, through foreign missions. 

To "evangelize" means to instruct in the 
Gospel, to pervade with the spirit of the 
Gospel. The world's evangelization re- 
quires that every person who has reached 
the age of moral accountability, in some 
one generation, shall be personally respon- 
sible for his rejection of Christ or his igno- 
rance concerning Him, because knowledge 
of his claims was or might have been a per- 
sonal consciousness. Nor does it stop here. 
It includes also the gathering of those who 
have accepted Him into the organic body 
of Christ, which is the Church. "Go ye 



World Evangelization 9 

therefore, and make disciples of all the na- 
tions, baptizing them into the name of the 
Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Spirit : teaching- them to observe all things 
whatsoever I commanded you." 

The world's evangelization does not 
necessarily mean that every person shall 
have an experimental knowledge of Christ, 
but it does mean much more than the sim- 
ple setting forth of His character and office 
by printed page or proclamation through 
public speech. It includes also such setting 
forth of Christ and His claims by living 
witnesses of His indwelling and efficacy, 
that every person may see the demonstra- 
tion of Christianity in practical living, and 
have the Gospel presented in his own 
tongue. This will constitute the world's 
evangelization, for hastening which, to the 
limit of personal ability, every Church and 
each individual is responsible. 



io Young People and 

There are limited areas in America, 
Great Britain, India, and elsewhere which 
have been evangelized. Some which were 
are not now, and some are now which never 
were before. But not a single land nor 
people is wholly evangelized. There are 
multiplied millions who have never heard 
of Christ, who because of isolation, igno- 
rance, superstition, or sensuality know 
nothing of the provisions and claims of the 
Gospel. The primary need is that mission- 
aries shall be sent throughout the whole 
world to teach the knowledge of Christ to 
every creature. "How then shall they call 
on Him in whom they have not believed, 
and how shall they believe in Him of whom 
they have not heard, and how shall they 
hear without a preacher, and how shall they 
preach except they be sent ?" 

The essential spirit and normal inter- 
pretation of the Gospel require its diffusion. 



World Evangelization ii 

Love is a vital and social force and must, 
by the law of its existence, disseminate it- 
self. No one to whom the Gospel comes 
has an exclusive right in it. Every one 
holds that which he has received in trust 
for all those for whom the Giver committed 
it to him. To possess constitutes the obli- 
gation to communicate. "Freely ye have 
received, freely give." 

The cycle of God's purpose for human- 
ity finds expression in two co-ordinate com- 
mands. Each is expressed in a monosylla- 
ble. To those who are at "enmity against 
God," He says, "Come." "Come now, and 
let us reason together, saith the Lord: 
Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
be as white as snow." "Incline thine ear, 
and come unto Me, and your soul shall 
live." "Come unto Me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest." "The Spirit and the bride say, Come. 



12 Young People and 

And let him that heareth say, Come. And 
whosoever will, let him take the water of 
life freely." This is the Gospel of salva- 
tion for the sinner. It means enrichment 
for the destitute. It includes pardon and 
provision for every need. 

As soon as the invited has been received, 
transformed into the divine likeness, and 
made a partaker of the divine nature; as 
soon as love is enthroned in his heart, 
Christ commissions him to "go." "Ye have 
not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and 
ordained you, that ye should go and bring 
forth fruit." "Go ye therefore, and teach 
all nations." "Go ye into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature." "Let 
the dead bury their dead ; but go thou and 
preach the kingdom of God." Christ gives 
to every soul He regenerates a commission 
wherein He may find expression for that 
love which is inseparable from the renewed 



World Evangelization 13 

nature. This is the Gospel of service for 
the saint. It means opportunity for the re- 
claimed. It includes equipment, employ- 
ment, reward. He invites to come, that He 
may qualify to go. The qualification is 
never withheld from any who respond to 
the invitation. "He will give grace and 
glory." The world's evangelization waits 
upon the application of our Lord's Gospel 
of Go. "Behold, I send you forth." 

The Church must supply two things in 
sufficient quantity and quality before the 
world can be evangelized. These are in- 
cluded in the command, "Go ye." 

First, the necessary agents. These 
must be selected, trained, commissioned, and 
sent "unto the uttermost part of the earth" 
to proclaim and interpret the Gospel and to 
raise up and direct millions of native Chris- 
tians to witness by living the experience of 
its reality and power. 



14 Young People and 

Second, the necessary accessories for 
maintenance and expansion must be pro- 
vided. That is, those who are saved must 
demonstrate that they are partakers of sal- 
vation for service by serving, either on the 
firing line, abroad, or at home as called, or 
by serving by a similar consecration and 
devotion in supplying the accessories, such 
as sympathy and support, faith and sub- 
stance, prayer and fellowship. Each one is 
under obligation to have and manifest this 
spirit of service whether at home or in the 
field, even though the latter may be more 
difficult to assume, or the former more diffi- 
cult to maintain. All must share the bur- 
den and the triumph as "laborers together 
with God." None is excluded from God's 
plan. If included he must do God's work 
as God directs. 

While all men are in a general way, and 
each is in a particular way, included in the 



World Evangelization 15 

Gospel of salvation for service, the young 
have a special relation to it. There are 
some blessings promised in God's Word to 
old people, and others to those in middle 
life, but young people are the preferred 
class in God's providence, for every blessing 
promised in the Bible may be successively 
theirs. When a child is converted it is a 
double work of grace, namely, the salva- 
tion of a life and the salvation of a life- 
time, with its untold opportunities and in- 
fluence. Polycarp was martyred at ninety- 
five. But he was converted at nine, and 
gave eighty-six years of blessed service. 

It is not an accident that young people 
are the chief objective of the scheme of 
salvation. In youth the heart is like wax 
in its impressibleness, like bronze in its 
retentiveness. The years in which conver- 
sion usually occurs are between twelve and 
twenty. Statistics show the year of most 



1 6 Young People and 

frequent conversion is the sixteenth for 
girls and the seventeenth for boys. Those 
years passed, the prospects decrease, and 
after twenty-two the probability is very 
small, for over ninety per cent of the mem- 
bers of the evangelical Churches in America 
were converted before they were twenty- 
three years of age. Less than five per cent 
of those who leave college unconverted ever 
commit themselves to a Christian life. 

Practical philosophers and psychologists 
no longer busy themselves about probation 
after death, but with how far the tendency 
to fixedness of habit reduces the probability 
of ever initiating the Christian life after the 
twenty-fifth year has passed. The thought 
of the past concerned itself with the Divine 
decrees, and threw the responsibility upon 
God; the thought of the present is largely 
concerned with personal duty, and throws 
the responsibility upon man. 



World Evangelization 17 

The latest psychology teaches "that our 
impulses and instincts ripen in a certain 
order, and if the proper objects are pro- 
vided at the proper time habits of conduct 
and character are formed which last for 
life; but if neglected the impulse dies out, 
and our most earnest efforts meet with no 
response/' Professor Starbuck asserts and 
supports his statements with many facts and 
figures, that "conversion is a distinctively 
adolescent phenomenon." Professor Coe 
says, "Conversion, or some equivalent per- 
sonalizing of religion, is a normal part of 
adolescent growth, and a deeply personal 
life choice is now easier than either before 
or after." The normal occupation during 
adolescence is consciously or subconsciously 
to make life choices. 

Young people must be the prime object- 
ive in the world's evangelization, for usually 
before or during adolescence, if ever, the 



1 8 Young People and 

foundations of a Christian life are laid, the 
student life is determined, and the trend 
for greatest usefulness is established. 

If for thirty consecutive years all the 
young people in the world between ten and 
twenty-three years of age could be reached 
by Christian teaching, the world's evangel- 
ization would be accomplished. Five succes- 
sive generations of young people, from ten 
to seventeen years of age — during the years 
when most responsive to the claims of re- 
ligion — would have been under the influence 
of Gospel truth, and five successive gen- 
erations, between sixteen and twenty-three 
years of age — the second period most de- 
terminative of a religious life — would have 
had similar influence. Within these two 
periods nearly every one assumes that per- 
sonal relation to religion which he makes 
final. The vast majority of those who are 
now twenty-two years old, and not already 



World Evangelization 19 

Christians, of whom probably less than two 
per cent would ever be converted under the 
most favorable conditions, will have passed 
to their final account within thirty years, 
and the world would be occupied by those 
who had faced the responsibility of accept- 
ing or rejecting Christ during the most 
favorable periods of their lives, and the 
world would be evangelized. 

Young people are not discriminated 
against in the outworking of God's pur- 
pose. They receive from Christ the com- 
mission to "go," which is never withheld 
from those who "come." As they neces- 
sarily constitute the chief subjects of the 
world's evangelization, they must largely 
furnish the agents and accessories for its 
accomplishment. Their number would of 
itself make them an important factor in this 
great work, but their quality is more im- 
portant than their quantity. They are ac- 



20 Young People and 

quisitive and at the age when, if ever, they 
will enthrone God, and lay the foundation 
of devotion and liberality. They most 
readily acquire strange languages, are en- 
thusiastic, aggressive, and courageous, rarely 
pessimistic, have endurance and improv- 
ableness. They are the part of the army 
most easily mobilized, for they are not as 
yet articulated with society, and high en- 
terprise appeals to their spirit. They are 
flexible and readily adapt themselves to 
changing conditions. They furnish the very 
material for a successful propaganda, and 
offer the rational field for recruiting the 
agents and developing the supporters. 

If the leaders are to be truly great their 
training must be commenced when young, 
that they may discover their aptitudes, de- 
velop their endowments, gather and co-ordi- 
nate detailed and comprehensive knowl- 
edge, acquire skill and become adjusted to 



World Evangelization 21 

their mission. It is more than a coincidence 
that during- adolescence, when men and 
women are most responsive to the call of 
God, they are also most available as agents, 
most teachable, and then, if ever, the habits 
of devotion and liberality are best estab- 
lished. 

Every one is commissioned to be Christ's 
witness "to the uttermost parts of the 
world." The burden of proof is with each 
one to show how he is justified in not being 
personally at the front. If that is clear, he 
is under positive requirement to be at the 
front representatively so far as possible. To 
hold the life line is as important and obliga- 
tory as to go into the breakers. 

If adequate accessories are to be avail- 
able it must be through training the young 
people to practical sympathy and personal, 
proportionate co-operation. In two decades 
or less the $25,000,000,000 now in the hands 



22 Young People and 

of the Church members of the United States 
will be $50,000,000,000, or more, and this 
sum, whatever it may be, will be subject to 
the administration of those who to-day are 
in their formative age. Those to whom it 
is now intrusted will be in eternity, facing 
the most serious aspect of the question how 
it was they had the direction of so much 
capital and left it uninvested for the king- 
dom. Now, if ever, those who are to pos- 
sess it must be taught the duty and joy of 
systematic and proportionate co-operation 
with the cause of God, that it is their obli- 
gation to tithe their possessions, and their 
opportunity to contribute so much as they 
can, not from impulse or as a gratuity, but 
"as good stewards of the manifold grace of 
God," that at His coming Christ may have 
His own with proper use. Unconsecrated 
wealth is an offense to God, and a canker 
and curse to the holder. "Your gold and 



World Evangelization 23 

your silver is cankered and the rust of them 
shall be a witness against you." 

If all the members of the Church were 
devoted to hastening the kingdom of God, 
the Church militant would be the Church 
triumphant, and the problem of home mis- 
sions would be solved in a decade. There 
is nothing more contagious than Christian 
personality. 

Eighteen and two-thirds centuries have 
passed since Christ commanded His disci- 
ples to preach His Gospel to every creature, 
yet only one of the entire membership of 
the evangelical Churches of the United 
States has gone into the foreign field for 
every 5,500 who stay at home, and only 
1,500 of their ordained ministers are en- 
gaged in foreign work, while the other 18,- 
000,000 members and 122,000 ministers are 
living their lives in the home field. 

If the evangelical Churches were to send 



24 Young People and 

to the foreign fields two thousand mission- 
aries a year for, say, thirty years, the world 
could be evangelized before the close of 
the first third of this twentieth century. 
That would mean, after about twelve years, 
a standing army of, say, 20,000 laboring 
among the 1,000,000,000 who know not God 
nor Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, or 
one missionary for every 50,000 persons to 
be reached. That would be sufficient, if 
properly supported, to develop and give 
direction to the native agencies and assure 
success. 

This is not impossible, nor would it 
make a disastrous or unreasonable draft on 
the home Churches. There are nearly twice 
two thousand young people, student volun- 
teers, in the colleges and universities of the 
United States to-day who are pledged for 
this work and eager to go. If the demand 
were manifest their number would be 



World Evangelization 25 

largely increased. Two thousand a year 
would only be one out of eleven of the 
young people who go out from our colleges 
and universities, or about one out of every 
sixteen leaving our institutions of higher 
education annually. 

To carry out this moderate but sufficient 
propaganda would require, say, $30,000,000 
annually. This should be no serious incon- 
venience. The people of the United States 
spend, shall we say waste, $11,000,000 an- 
nually on chewing gum. That is one-third 
the sum necessary to save the world. Thirty 
million dollars per year would be only three- 
twenty-fifths of one per cent, or twelve 
cents out of each hundred dollars now in 
the hands of the evangelical Church mem- 
bers in this country. This would be no 
burden. What might be done by reasonable 
sacrifice? The young people could provide 
this amount themselves if they had a mind 



26 Young People and 

to do so. An average of one cent per day 
from the more than five million members 
enrolled in the Young People's Societies of 
the Churches in the United States, and one 
cent per week from the something over thir- 
teen millions gathered in the Sunday- 
schools, would supply almost the amount 
necessary. 

It is not unreasonable to believe that the 
world's evangelization will be accomplished 
by the young people when they are properly 
educated. When Frederick the Great heard 
of the defeat of his army on a certain occa- 
sion, he exclaimed, "We must educate." 
Burke said, "Education is the cheap defense 
of nations." The Church, like Hannah^ the 
wife of Elkanah, must bring her youth to 
the temple and dedicate them to be educated 
for and in the ministry of the sanctuary. 
Then she can say, like Christ, "Of them 
which Thou gavest me have I lost none." 



World Evangelization 27 

The prophecy is "All thy children shall be 
taught of the Lord." 

If "child" means one who is not yet 
hardened into maturity, the prophecy that a 
"child shall lead them" may be fulfilled in 
this great work of bringing the world to 
Christ. The soldiers who have won the 
great battles of modern times were young 
men, many of them still in their teens. Gen- 
eral Grant said in his Fourth of July ad- 
dress at Hamburg, "What saved the Union 
was the coming forward of the young men." 

Patrick Henry, by rallying the young 
men of the Virginia House of Delegates, se- 
cured the passage of a resolution sustaining 
the independence of the Colonies and set a 
standard for the new world. 

The French Academy, which for two 
and a half centuries has been so potent a 
factor in shaping the brilliant literature of 
that people, had its beginning in the ardent 



28 Young People and 

longings and aspirations of young men, the 
oldest of whom, with perhaps one exception, 
were under twenty-seven years of age. 

Pitt entered Parliament when he was 
hardly twenty-two, and was prime minister 
of Great Britain before he was twenty-five. 

The typical missionary, who outlined the 
ideal and set the pattern, — He who under- 
took the most stupendous work ever enter- 
prised, the work of reconciling God and 
man, said at the age of thirty-three, "It is 
finished/' and returned to heaven from 
whence He came. 

Saul officially witnessed the stoning of 
Stephen at twenty-seven, and a short time 
after was commissioned by Christ to go bear 
His name far hence to the Gentiles. 

Timothy was but fourteen when con- 
verted and eighteen w T hen called to become 
the assistant to the great apostle. 

Adoniram Judson was but twenty-two 



World Evangelization 29 

when he resolved to devote himself to for- 
eign mission work, and started for India at 
twenty-four. 

Robert Morrison was but twenty-two 
when he was accepted by the London Mis- 
sionary Society, and commissioned to open 
Christian work in China. 

David Livingstone was twenty-one, Jacob 
Chamberlain nineteen, and Bishop Thoburn 
only seventeen when called to foreign mis- 
sion work. These ages are not exceptional, 
but illustrate the rule. "Wherever in his- 
tory we mark a great movement of human- 
ity, we commonly detect a young man at its 
head or at its heart." 

It is quite probable that when this world 
is evangelized, it will be through the agency 
of young people occupying the firing line, 
seeking and teaching the young people while 
the rest of the Church, whose training com- 
menced as young people, will supply with 



30 



Young People and 



equal devotion the accessories for mainte- 
nance and expansion, every one giving his 
sympathy, prayer, thought, time, and money, 
as each is possible. 

It is not only possible for the young peo- 
ple to accomplish the world's evangelization, 
but the agencies are well organized and the 
process far advanced. Formerly the trend 
of the evangelical Churches was to em- 
phasize, through organized effort, the im- 
portance of work for young people ; latterly 
the trend is to emphasize the necessity of 
work by young people. The organizations 
for developing the knowledge, loyalty, and 
ministries of young people have had a quiet 
but striking evolution until their compre- 
hensiveness, possibilities, and articulation 
with the great work of the world's evangel- 
ization are startling and prophetic. 

First, as to number and date of organ- 
ization, is the Sunday-school. In its earlier 



World Evangelization 31 

stage it gathered poor children, and them 
exclusively, and taught the elements of edu- 
cation and primary religious truths. Sub- 
sequently it sought to gather all children 
and youth for instruction in Bible truths 
and personal obligations. Its system, scope, 
and efficiency have improved, looking more 
and more to securing practical and imme- 
diate results in personal experience and ef- 
fectiveness. 

There are over thirteen millions gathered 
into the Sunday-schools of the United 
States. It is estimated that of these twenty 
per cent are converted during their attend- 
ance, and twenty per cent afterward. That 
leaves sixty per cent to be accounted for; 
but the forty per cent who profess conver- 
sion furnish eighty-seven per cent of the 
members of the evangelical Churches, and 
only thirteen per cent are gathered from 
those who never had Sunday-school instruc- 



32 Young People and 

tion. The Sunday-school teachers consti- 
tute the vanguard o£ the kingdom. If our 
Sunday-school scholars were systematically 
trained to give an average of one cent 
per week to the world's evangelization, 
it would amount to nearly seven mil- 
lion dollars, or be about as much as the 
entire Protestant Church of America is 
giving for foreign missions. Systematic 
work has commenced in this most promis- 
ing field. The sixteenth or seventeenth is 
the year of maximum probability for con- 
version, and the aim and effort is becoming 
more defined on the part of the Sunday- 
schools to see that every scholar is awak- 
ened, converted, and started in systematic 
co-operation with the Church before that year 
is passed. In the first year of this century 
there were more than 2,000 normal classes, 
and 18,000 conventions held among the 
workers in these Sunday-schoo 1 " and over 



World Evangelization 33 

200,000 joined the evangelical Churches 
from the ranks of the scholars. 

The Young Men's Christian Association 
was organized in 1844. Its primary object 
was to look after young men, who are sub- 
jected to varied, subtle, and serious tempta- 
tions in our "homeless cities." Everything 
is a part of the Universe of God, and 
anything which is well born becomes ad- 
justed to His great purpose. So the Young 
Men's Christian Association has naturally 
broadened its scope, multiplied its depart- 
ments of work, and enriched its ministries. 

The International Committee of the 
Young Men's Christian Association com- 
menced to develop "The Student Young 
Men's Christian Association" work in 1877. 
The movement now includes nearly every 
leading college and university in North 
America. "Its object is to lead students to 
be intelligent and loyal disciples of Jesus 
3 



34 Young People and 

Christ, to train them in individual and as- 
sociation Christian work, and to influence 
them to place their lives where they can 
best serve their generation." Through sec- 
retaries, training conferences, Bible, mis- 
sion, normal, and other study classes, spe- 
cial literature and deputation men, its work 
has been systematically pushed until it has 
come to be a chief influence in our leading 
institutions for promoting the kingdom in 
the lives of the students. In State and un- 
denominational institutions it has well-nigh 
the monopoly of this work. Largely 
through its efficiency the colleges and uni- 
versities have come to be the most Christian 
communities in the United States and Can- 
ada. "Taking the young men of North 
America as a whole, not more than eight 
per cent, or one in twelve, are Christians. 
In 1902 a careful census taken in three hun- 
dred and fifty-six of our colleges and uni- 



World Evangelization 35 

versities, showed that of 83,000 young men, 
fifty-two per cent, or more than one-half of 
the student body, were members of evan- 
gelical Churches. Twenty-five years pre- 
vious the proportion was less than one- 
third/'* 

The virility of the movement makes it a 
great deal more than a home missionary or- 
ganization. The student type of religion is 
manly and practical. "Their religious life 
is based upon a personal study of the Scrip- 
tures and Christian evidences, and not least 
helpful in shaping their faith has been the 
influence of the presentation and study of 
the facts of Christian missions." For years 
past students have been the largest pur- 
chasers of missionary books. They believe, 
with Bishop Whately, "If our religion is not 
true we ought to change it. If it is true we 
are bound to propagate what we believe to 
be the truth." 



*John R. Mott. 



36 Young People and 

"The Student Volunteer Movement for 
Foreign Missions/' a special branch of this 
work, was organized in 1888. It works 
among the most potential class in the Chris- 
tian world and seeks to bring them to the 
highest service in ministry to others. Their 
appeal is to conscience, conviction, consecra- 
tion, courage, and character. The volun- 
teers are among those of strongest person- 
ality, largest equipment, and greatest effi- 
ciency. Through this agency about 9,000 
students volunteered in fifteen years. A 
large proportion of these are still at college 
preparing, but about 3,000 are actually at 
work in the foreign field, and many more 
would be if the Church had been ready to 
send them. A recruiting agency has thus 
been offered the Church the like of which 
she had never known. 

The World's Student Christian Federa- 
tion, organized in 1895, includes thirteen na- 
tional organizations, over 1,500 separate as- 



World Evangelization 37 

sociations or unions, and about ninety per 
cent of the institutions of higher education 
of the entire world, with a total member- 
ship of over 80,000 students and professors. 
An associated Christian effort has thus 
united more students around the cross of 
the conquering Jesus, than any other inter- 
collegiate organization, athletic, literary, 
fraternal, or political. "As go the univer- 
sities so go the nations." 

This Federation is concerned, in purpose 
at least, with the moral and religious wel- 
fare of two-thirds of the young men of the 
human race. The movement is now look- 
ing toward the 8,000 secondary schools of 
the United States and Canada with their 
275,000 boys as the key to the colleges and 
universities. Of the 375,000 members of 
the Young Men's Christian Association in 
this country, 45,035 are boys under sixteen 
years of age. 

The Young Woman's Christian Associa- 



38 Young People and 

tion, working along similar lines, with sim- 
ilar results, was organized in 1855, and 
numbers 537 associations, with a member- 
ship of 67,708. 

The young people who never go to col- 
lege far exceed in number those who do. 
They also are organizing and being trained 
for and enlisted in this great work. This 
indicates a third line of preparation for the 
world's evangelization. 

The Young People's Society of Chris- 
tian Endeavor, the Epworth League, the 
Baptist Young People's Union, the Chris- 
tian Union of United Brethren, the Young 
People's Union of the United Presbyterian 
Church, the Brotherhood of Andrew and 
Philip, and other smaller associations, in- 
clude an aggregate membership, not count- 
ing any twice, of somewhat over 5,000,000, 
or about twenty-eight per cent of the evan- 
gelical Church members of the United 
States. 



World Evangelization 39 

Horizon and inspiration, purpose and 
uplift, have come to the young people 
through the great conventions held by these 
various organizations. Growth is as nat- 
ural to young people as enthusiasm. It is 
significant that their conventions are ap- 
proximating the Conference idea. They are 
stressing more and more Bible, mission, and 
normal study, study of the various fields, 
problems, phases, and methods of Church 
life and work. Their programs provide for 
less rhetoric and more facts. Those who 
have brought things to pass are invited to 
contribute of their experiences, explain 
methods, and answer questions. In their 
local organization they associate young peo- 
ple together for specific religious purposes, 
spiritual, missionary, charitable, literary, and 
social. They make the young people ac- 
cessible to systematic instruction and de- 
velop organized and individual effort, skill, 
and efficiency, and beget a sense of personal 



40 Young People and 

responsibility and achievement. They have 
vast possibilities and are gradually occupy- 
ing them. 

Only about two per cent of the people of 
the United States, who reach twenty-three 
years of age, without a clear personal iden- 
tification with Christ and His Church, ever 
become Christians. The Young People's 
Societies are developing a spirit of co-op- 
eration with the Churches to see by all pos- 
sible means that every one who can be 
reached is thoroughly indoctrinated in the 
Scriptures, established in habits of propor- 
tionate giving, and personally identified 
with evangelical work before he reaches that 
age. 

Technically the term young people ap- 
plies only till the end of adolescence, or say, 
through the twenty-second year. It re- 
quires an average of approximately 30,000 
young people and 65,000 children to be re- 



World Evangelization 41 

cruited every week through the year to 
maintain the membership of the Young Peo- 
ple's Societies and Sunday-schools at their 
present enrollment, so the Young People's 
Societies present a constant demand for well 
trained leaders, and the work of the Sun- 
day-school creates similar requirements with 
growing urgency. 

The fourth stage in this development of 
organized young people's agencies for the 
world's evangelization is the "Young Peo- 
ple's Missionary Movement," which was 
born of an oppressive sense of need that the 
ever-changing membership of the Young 
People's Societies and Sunday-schools 
should have trained leaders, up to date alike 
in the wisdom of the past and demands of 
the present, capable to give direction to the 
systematic and practical study of the Word 
and work of God. The most successful 
workers in these fields keenly recognize this 



42 Young People and 

need. The Young People's Missionary 
Movement has its executive committee of 
fifteen, approved or selected by the Mission- 
ary Boards of the various Churches, its 
Board of Council and its secretary, with a 
well-equipped office. 

Its organization was not premeditated, 
but providential. It is purely supplement- 
ary to the work of the Church universal, 
and in no sense intended to supplant any 
branch of it. It stands for the broadest 
catholicity through an enriching and en- 
riched denominationalism. Each Church 
may best train its own leaders, but where 
can the leaders of these leaders be trained 
so efficiently as in an interdenominational 
conference by denominational specialists ? 
This is the object of the Young People's 
Missionary Movement. It brings together 
specialists from the Young Men's Christian 
Association, the Sunday-school, the secre- 



World Evangelization 43 

tariate of the various Mission Boards, re- 
turned missionaries, the leading educational 
institutions, and representative pulpits, to 
give instruction in its conferences. It is a 
clearing-house of facts and ideas, a school 
of methods, a dynamo of inspiration for 
both home and foreign mission workers, 
where each labors for all and all serve each. 
This fourth development marks the equip- 
ping and constructive stage through which 
key-workers may be selected, enriched, and 
trained more thoroughly than ever before to 
lead in the specific work of organizing and 
developing the young people through their 
own denominational societies and Sunday- 
schools. Though the first preliminary meet- 
ing in which this organization had its in- 
ception was held in December, 1901, it has 
conducted six conferences, attended by 
more than fourteen hundred workers among 
young people from about thirty denomina- 



44 Young People and 

tions, and secured a permanent home for its 
central annual meeting at Silver Bay, Lake 
George. 

The movement has spread to England, 
where two conferences, suggested by the 
Silver Bay Conference, were held last sum- 
mer, one by the Nonconformists at Little 
Hampton, and one by the Church Mission- 
ary Society of the Church of England at 
Keswick. These were attended by more 
than six hundred delegates, and arrange- 
ments are in progress to repeat and enlarge 
this work next summer. It is also taking 
rootage in Canada. No one may estimate 
the importance of this phase of the organ- 
ized Young People's work, which promises 
to become a movement of movements. 

Arrangements are made for Sectional 
Young People's Missionary and Bible Con- 
ferences, to be held during the winter 
months at metropolitan centers, where a 



World Evangelization 45 

number of workers from the Young Peo- 
ple's Missionary Movement will assist in 
the exercises. Their object is to train lead- 
ers who will be able to organize and direct 
Bible or Mission Study Classes in every 
congregation, Sunday-school, and Young 
People's Society within the territory reached 
by the conference. Several of these have 
been held with marked success. 

Another important field of usefulness for 
this movement is in the preparation of suita- 
ble programs and material for monthly mis- 
sionary exercises for the Sunday-school. 
This material, placed at the disposal of de- 
nominational missionary secretaries for 
adaptation to denominational needs and used 
through denominational channels, will be of 
very great educational value in directing the 
thought of the thirteen millions of Sunday- 
school scholars each month to the needs of 
the mission fields. 



46 Young People and 

Similar, though somewhat more elab- 
orate, programs, prepared for the use of 
Young People's Societies, may give direc- 
tion monthly to the five millions of members 
of these Young People's organizations in a 
progressive study of the world field. 

A form of service that has already 
proven of great value is the preparation of 
suitable text-books for the use of Young 
People's Mission Study Classes. To meet 
the demand for such text-books, the Move- 
ment, through its Editorial Committee, has 
projected the Forward Mission Study 
Courses. These courses, as at present out- 
lined, comprise twenty volumes written by 
leading authorities on missions and present 
the needs and conditions of both home and 
foreign mission fields. The need and de- 
mand for books of this character are indi- 
cated by the fact that 20,000 copies of 
"Princely Men in the Heavenly Kingdom" 



World Evangelization 47 

— the book issued last year — were sold 
within two months of the date of publica- 
tion. Thirty-five thousand five hundred 
copies of "Sunrise in the Sunrise King- 
dom" — the foreign mission book issued this 
year — were sold within four months, while 
orders were received for 5,500 copies of 
"Heroes of the Cross" — the Home Mission 
book just issued — before it was off the press. 
This is the sixth of the series. 

In addition to the preparation of suita- 
ble mission study text-books, the Movement 
prepares and furnishes, through the denomi- 
national authorities, a series of pamphlets 
and leaflets of suggestions for the use of 
leaders in teaching the classes. 

The preparation and circulation of mis- 
sionary libraries suitable for Young Peo- 
ple's Societies, Sunday-schools, and Mission 
Bands, are receiving the attention of the 
Movement through its Library Committee, 



48 Young People and 

composed of denominational missionary sec- 
retaries with Mr. Harlan P. Beach as chair- 
man. For the use of the mission study 
classes desiring reference books, Mission 
Study Reference Libraries, No. I and No. 2, 
have been published. No. 2, nine volumes 
on Japan, has already reached its third edi- 
tion. The selection and preparation of a 
library suitable for juniors and younger 
Sunday-school scholars is now receiving the 
attention of the committee. 

The great work of the Young People's 
Missionary Movement is not as an inde- 
pendent organization, but as a servant of 
the denominational boards whose represent- 
atives constitute its Executive Committee 
and Board of Council. 

The leading denominations are recogniz- 
ing the opportunity and obligation which 
these converging lines of organized Young 
People's work create. Thirteen of their 



World Evangelization 49 

Mission Boards have appointed secretaries, 
under the direction of standing committees, 
to give their time and energy, in whole or 
in part, especially to foster and develop the 
study and work of missions among the 
young people of their Churches. 

Perhaps none other has made such thor- 
ough provision, or as yet secured such strik- 
ing results, as the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. Its Discipline provides for the or- 
ganization of each of its 33,000 Sunday- 
schools into a Missionary Society, also for 
the supervision and the holding of a monthly 
meeting and an anniversary of each society. 
They gave $484,000 for missions last year, 
and are showing a healthy growth in intelli- 
gent sympathy and practical aid. 

Our Board of Education, with funds se- 
cured principally through the collections 
taken annually on Children's-day, has as- 
sisted 12,411 young people from our Sun- 
4 



50 Young People and 

day-schools to an advanced education. Of 
these, 7,182 became ministers, 863 mission- 
aries, and 2,586 teachers. One-quarter of 
the missionaries of the Woman's Foreign 
Missionary Society, and twenty-eight per 
cent of the foreign missionaries of the Par- 
ent Missionary Board were assisted during 
their preparation by this society. 

The Epworth League occupies high 
ground in its work for world evangeliza- 
tion. It requires a standing committee to 
be appointed in every chapter and organiza- 
tion, under the chairmanship of the second 
vice-president, to which is committed the 
Department of World Evangelism, includ- 
ing Christian stewardship, Church benevo- 
lences, and the various forms of missionary 
activity and study. It regularly prints out- 
lines and suggestions for mission and Bible 
study rally days, and monthly missionary 
topics on its topic cards and in its official 



World Evangelization 51 

organ, and its co-operation in developing 
mission study among the young people has 
been both cordial and helpful. 

Our Missionary Society has a Young 
People's Department, and secretary, and a 
missionary editor with well organized of- 
fices and expert assistants. These are 
directed by a Standing Committee of the 
Board. They are creating and circulating 
literature, planning for and assisting at con- 
ventions, preparing and displaying mission- 
ary exhibits, conducting correspondence, 
directing student campaigns and campaign- 
ers, and organizing and supervising mis- 
sion study classes among our Sunday- 
schools, colleges, and young people gener- 
ally. 

In a single year, under the direction of 
our Young People's Missionary Secretary, 
thirty of our colleges were visited and Con- 



52 Young People and 

ferences held to train campaigners, and one 
hundred and thirty-two campaigners were 
placed in the field to organize and conduct 
mission and Bible study classes, circulate 
literature and locate missionary libraries. 

During the year cards, leaflets, and 
pamphlets, aggregating 700,000 pieces, were 
printed and sent out on Missions, Steward- 
ship, and General Benevolences. This in- 
cludes about 70,000 circular letters. 

Our Young People's Missionary De- 
partment gave direction last year to 682 
mission study classes, with an enrollment of 
8,613, systematically studying the pre- 
scribed courses, and a great many classes 
were not officially reported. During the 
past four years while systematic mission 
study by our young people has been devel- 
oping, there have been over 1,900 classes, 
with an actual attendance of 23,000, and 
the indications are we will have 1,200 



World Evangelization 53 

classes, with 15,000 engaged in mission 
study this year. 

Let a single example suggest the far- 
reaching benefit of this systematic mission 
study work : 

The Pittsburg Conference of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal Church contains 255 pas- 
toral charges, including city, town, and 
country Churches. At the beginning of 
1 90 1 many of these pastoral charges were 
without any young people's organization, 
and in some there was a positive opposition 
to having the young people organized for or 
engaged in distinctive Church work. Many 
of their Epworth League chapters were 
without any appreciable spiritual force, and 
the Conference and district organizations 
were inactive. During the past three years 
and a half there has been a marked growth 
of Church life and activity in all desirable 
directions, and this bears a striking relation 



54 Young People and 

to the development of systematic mission 
study by their young people, as the follow- 
ing figures indicate : 





MISSION 


CONFERENCE 


PERCENTAGE 




STUDY 


CONTRIBUTION 


OF INCREASE 




CLASSES 


TO MISSIONS 


OVER I9OO 


1900 


2 


$33,236 




1 901 (About) 


40 


38,058 


14 


1902 " 


100 


46,927 


44 


1903 


150 


64,231 


90 



The four District Epworth Leagues in 
which the largest number of mission study 
classes have been conducted, propose to 
maintain a new mission in the Island of 
Java, Malaysia Conference, which the 
Church authorities have arranged to open 
for them. They secured $4,500 for this 
purpose last year, which is not included in 
the above statement. The missionary has 
been appointed, and it is expected that the 
work will be commenced this year. 

The Fifth District League is supporting 
two home missionaries in the coke region 



World Evangelization 55 

of Pennsylvania, and all the benevolences 
of the Conference show a marked improve- 
ment. 

The Conference Epworth League sup- 
ports a Conference League missionary sec- 
retary, who gives all her time to the organ- 
ization of League chapters and study classes 
within the Conference. 

Many persons have grown in their gen- 
erous support of the Church. The follow- 
ing statement of the giving of one person is 
a sample. The giving of some others is 
even more marked: 

Contributed in 1900: $0.50 
1901 : 1.50 
1902: 2.50 
1903 : 42.50 (commenced tithing) 

The systematic study of missions by the 
young people of this Conference during the 
past three and a half years has broadened 
vision, increased interest in all forms of 



U^tG. 



56 Young People and 

Church work, deepened the spiritual life, and 
proven to be an important factor in secur- 
ing an advance of ninety per cent in the 
missionary contributions, that is from $33,- 
ooo to $64,000, while the young people 
themselves have raised $4,500 additional, 
started a new mission, and are maintaining 
two Home missionaries. And this is not 
an isolated case; for similar results have 
occurred elsewhere. It pays not only spir- 
itually, but financially, and that speedily, to 
train the young. It is denominational sui- 
cide to neglect them. 

The Young People's Department of the 
Parent Missionary Society, together with 
the Epworth League, the Board of Educa- 
tion, the Sunday-school Union, and the 
Woman's Foreign and the Woman's Home 
Missionary Societies, are doing a great work 
among our young people, and constantly 



World Evangelization 57 

making manifest the demands and possi- 
bilities of this undeveloped but inviting field. 
The far-reaching influence of this is beyond 
calculation. 

Each of the four great movements, 
the Sunday-school, the Young Men's and 
Young Woman's Christian Associations, the 
Young People's Societies, and the Young 
People's Missionary Movement, has its dis- 
tinctive field and commission, but they nat- 
urally overlap and supplement each other. 
All are the legitimate children of the 
Church which begat and nurtures them. 
She rejoices in their development. Their 
success is her honor, and they are honored 
in being able to aid with growing efficiency 
in preparing her for the coming of Him 
who is Lord of all. 

The Church which neglects her young 
people "proves herself improvident and 



58 Young People and 

must neither wonder nor complain if 
heaven leaves her nothing to nurse but her 
own desolation." 

What is true of the Churches in the 
United States in their relation to this great 
problem, is in a measure true of all 
Churches and lands in Christendom. 

Nothing is accomplished without vision. 
Those through whom the Spirit of God has 
its most effective work are the Seers, those 
who see the vision of God's purpose and of 
human opportunity. They have the first 
qualification for leadership in the world's 
evangelization. 

We are now living in the dispensation of 
the Holy Spirit, when it was promised 
"Your young men shall see visions/' and 
"the spirit of teaching shall be given to 
your sons and daughters." Surely, "The 
light that never was on sea or land" is the 



World Evangelization 59 

illumination of these organized activities of 
the young people. 

Their responsibility and their goal is the 
world's evangelization. Their challenge is 
to the host of God. Their activity and de- 
velopment give hope that in and through 
the young people, who rapidly transform 
knowledge into power, and are teeming with 
that joyous fullness of creative life which 
radiates thoughts as inspirations and dissi- 
pates "the torpor of narrow vision and in- 
dolent ignorance" by the irresistible power 
of the broad human gladness found in a 
life of unselfish love of their kind, the de- 
sire of God shall be realized, "Who will 
have all men to be saved and come unto 
the knowledge of the truth." 



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